As with all theater companies, Theater Grottesco (TG) attempts to tell stories. The essential challenge is how to connect with the audience on emotional and spiritual levels as well as on the more literal level of narrative. Company co-founder and artistic director John Flax is always searching for a “new way of telling a story” with his experienced ensemble attempting to discover “what forms make something new.” John makes the analogy between the congruence among TG’s ensemble actors and a no-look pass from a highly skilled point guard on an experienced basketball team. That flash of coordinated brilliance that “wow factor” is what TG is looking to create. At its essence, TG is about the physical potential of craft.
In a like manner, Flax argues that every work needs to be placed in an appropriate theater space. When TG first toured, the company would be surprised that what worked one night would fail miserably the next. They were confused at why “certain audiences didn’t get it” until the troupe came to understand how different spaces either supported the work or didn’t. John Flax believes that since plays are “presented in space” they “must fit into that necessary space” in order for the work to succeed. Theater Grottesco’s goal is to marry the potential of the physical craft of acting and the architecture of space on the “3-D canvas” that is the stage to communicate stories in a profound manner.
Founded in 1983 in Paris, Theater Grottesco was the co-creation of John Flax and Didier Maucort, both graduates of France’s Ecole Jacques Lecoq. Elizabeth Wiseman joined TG in 1984 and served with John Flax as co-artistic director from that date until 2000. The original goal of the company was to be based in Paris and to tour yearly in the United States. Flax soon learned in these pre-email days what “a large administrative monster” it was to be based in Europe and to organize tours, workshops, and residencies in the United States. In 1985, TG based itself out of New York City prior to an eight-year tenure in Detroit, Michigan, which had one of the most generous budgets for the support of the arts among American municipalities. Flax revealed that “a simultaneous combustion” of events led to TG’s relocation to the City Different.
Santa Fe has always responded favorably to the work of TG. On the company’s first American tour in 1984, Santa Fe was its first stop. They returned in 1985. In February of 1987, TG received a residency in Las Vegas, New Mexico, in the chapel of the then-named Las Vegas Sanatorium. Revived this past summer in Santa Fe, Fortune: The Rise and Fall of a Small Cookie Factory was developed in Las Vegas and saw its first performances at the Kimo Theater (Albuquerque), New Mexico Highlands University (Las Vegas), and the Armory of the Arts (Santa Fe). In the early 1990’s, Detroit began to renege on already signed agreements and the federal grant route became an endangered species. Flax and Wiseman decided it was time to head to the sun and re-established TG in Santa Fe in 1996.
The TG Ensemble and the manner in which it has gone about creating new work have changed over its twenty-five year existence. At first, the entire company was all on salary and everyone was on scene. There were leaders on individual projects, but the work was primarily collaborative in nature. With the move to Santa Fe and the drying up of funding, John Flax and Elizabeth Wiseman started over to re-build the company. They never auditioned for company members but brought in new performers through workshop projects. Now in a “post-Liz” stage, Flax is still searching for that “deeper collaboration” while wrestling with the vagaries of running a small non-profit theater group in Santa Fe: searching for appropriate rehearsal and performance spaces and working around performers work schedules since company members must hold outside employment.
Theater Grottesco’s next project is an ambitious re-telling of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. John Flax realizes he’s treading on dangerous ground in his reworking of Shakespeare: “It is an American illusion that Shakespeare is the highest pinnacle of theater-going. As with Moliere, Shakespeare stole his strong characters and physical activities from commedia dell’arte and his narratives from Roman models and historical chronicles. Shakespeare is, however, an amazing poet.” Flax has played Feste on the stage and has seen the play countless times so his tackling the Bard is “righting wrongs” “attempting to do it better.”
Since it is an axiom of TG performances that the performers don’t physically illustrate what is actually said in the text and a Shakespeare play “contains the entire narrative,” Flax is burrowing into the text to present all those dramatic moments that are simply talked about and not directly experienced, for example, Olivia’s mourning, the Duke of Illyria’s falling in love, and the ship crashing. Furthermore, the point of view will not be from the court but from the kitchen with the servants aware of Viola’s gender from the beginning and of the difference between love and lust. Flax reveals a contemporary political subtext for his Twelfth Night: “This is a story of what happens to an estate when the master is so obsessed that he’s distracted and forgets to manage his properties. The love stuff always remains the same.” The style of the play will be “Beckettesque clowning” with restrained gestures and expressions.
Theater Grottesco’s Twelfth Night will be performed in the fall of 2008 at Santa Fe Opera’s Stieren Orchestra Hall.
